August 16, 2001

Mr. Newport and other esteemed commissioners,

I should like to begin by stating that my wife and I own two houses in the City of Gainesville as well as forty acres of undeveloped land in the unincorporated portion of Alachua County.

I have been living in this area for sixteen years and a half, own a small business here, and wish to spend the rest of my life here, which for reasons I shall explain momentarily, I fear may very well not be possible.

Like many citizens of Alachua County, I moved here from elsewhere in Florida, having been born and raised in Pinellas County. When I was a child, there was a popular bumper sticker: "Love Pinellas and leave some of It". Alas, virtually none of it is left. The woods in which I played as a child are now trailer parks and the cow pastures, condominia.

I can not go home; although the house I grew up in still stands, my home has been demolished.

I must therefore, in no uncertain terms, oppose the comprehensive plan before you. With the amount of development it allows, my current home will likewise cease to exist, and there will be nowhere left on the face of the earth to flee to that resembles the Florida as Nature has given her to us.

The plan simply does not go far enough! Although an improvement over its predecessors, it fails to reflect the wishes of the electorate. Please remember that last year the people voted in a county commission at the opposite pole of what the wealthy and influential sought to purchase. Enraged that their historical success has failed them -- they appear to contend that it is their God-given right to purchase the finest politicians that money can buy -- and utterly contemptuous of the Democratic process which has betrayed them by thinking citizens who dared to vote for what will ensure their own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, rather than vote, as expected, like puppets, for candidates propped up by those with the fattest wallets, these enemies of the people now seek to intimidate you into reneging on your overwhelming mandate by threatening to invest more of their capital to spawn law suits designed to ensure a return on their investment.

Were you a government of, by, and for the people, our desire to preserve the homes and communities we so cherish, things that money can not buy, would not be threatened by further growth causing our property to lose all its value and becoming completely worthless, fit for nothing more than to be sold for some number of dollars at such a time when we must abandon it together with our life and be damned to be refugees with no homes, even while lost souls with use for nothing beyond what an accountant can add up, dare to tell us that we shall have profited. They deny us our right to live our investment in the good life but whine about some few "investors" who will make an insufficient profit. No government guarantees an outrageous profit from the stock market or any other investment, rather allowing ruinous losses from such gambles. Yet, when, say, a farmer in Alachua County is, as it were, threatened with being able to sell his farm at only a healthy profit, you commissioners are accused of stealing his supposed right to become wealthy.

By conveniently not counting the cost to future generations, a recent study has claimed that growth pays for itself. Quality of life aside, a world in which the aquifer has been drained and drinking water will need to manufactured will be an expensive world to live in.

But the more you stand up, my commissioners, the more history will remember you kindly for stopping actions that can not be reversed, and future generations should owe their quality of life to decisions you may well make tonight.

August 16, 2001 Meeting

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